Today, within large scale production of semi-hard and hard cheese the process can be divided in the following main steps: preparing a mixture of curd and whey by treating milk and adding rennet or another type of coagulant, dosing the curd and whey mixture into moulds, pressing the mixture in order to create a cheese by removing a great part of the whey, brining the cheese in a salty bath and finally ripening the cheese. Variations of this approach may occur depending for instance on the type of cheese to be produced.
The whey released during the pressing step is most often in modern cheese production plants carefully taken care of such that this can be turned into whey powder and later be used in other food products, such as protein enriched beverages. An effect of that this by-product is used for food products is that there is an increased interest from cheese producers to make sure that also the by-product, i.e. the whey, is collected and taken care of hygienically such that this can be sold as an ingredient fulfilling premium food quality standards.
In addition to making sure that the whey is taken care of hygienically and thereby that as much of the outcome of the production can be used in food products, there is a general interest from cheese producers to make sure that the operational costs of the production is kept as low as possible. Further, there is also an interest from the cheese producers to make sure that the cheese production system is too as small extent as possible reliable of a single component, thereby reducing the risk of a system shut down caused by the single component.